Obama wants shipyard visit to drive home sequester threat

President Barack Obama wants to send the message that Washington’s budget battle is not “an abstraction” but that it has real consequences, and to do that he’s turning to one of the most consequential pieces of military hardware in the arsenal — a 100,000-ton aircraft carrier.

Obama’s reported visit to Virginia’s Newport News Shipyard next week would take place during the final countdown to the onset of the March 1 automatic, across-the-board budget restrictions, and it would be in a place that has already begun to feel the bite from both the potential automatic $46 billion drop in spending and the lack of a defense budget for this fiscal year.

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This month, the Navy said it would not issue a contract for the shipyard to begin work refueling and overhauling the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln because service officials could not be confident they’d ultimately be able to afford it. Having that multibillion dollar job in jeopardy risks the jobs of thousands of shipyard workers, officials warn, and delaying work on the Abraham Lincoln also throws a monkey wrench into the schedule for overhauls and other work at the yard.

Newport News shipyard is the only one in the world that can build and overhaul the Navy’s nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, the largest warships ever built. Officials with its parent company, Huntington-Ingalls Industries, previously said the long lead time involved with their work might make them safer than other defense vendors from the early ripple effects of sequestration. But the other of March’s twin crises for the Defense Department — the March 27 expiration of the temporary continuing resolution that funds the government — means the military services could run out of money for many programs if Congress extends the CR without accommodating the Pentagon’s changing needs.

The Navy says the Abraham Lincoln will remain at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia until either Congress passes a budget for the current fiscal year or lawmakers fund its overhaul via “anomalies” if they extend the CR. Shipyard officials have urged lawmakers to come through for them.